It’s a Little Gray Today

But just a little…

If you actually have read this blog for a time, you’ll know I have a penchant for dragging these creaky bones up to the peaked roof of my wonderful, charming, unique, and warm house filled with love and affection, and shouting out for all to hear how happy I am and how lucky and blessed my life is… to a sickening degree for some of you, most likely.

All true… in spades.

But the operative words, this gray morning, from the above paragraph (once again, a run-on sentence disguised as a paragraph) are “creaky,” and “life.”

Richard Jeni, a not very nice guy, a chauvinist pig from the old school, and very, very funny (lower common denominator, but still…) comedian, was the last host of a series I line and co-produced for A&E, ‘Caroline’s Comedy Hour.’ He was probably about 50 years old when he shot himself to death last night. Oh there’ll be an investigation. It was his girlfriend who called it in. Maybe it’s really a homicide. Nonetheless, dead.

Two days ago, the lead singer of Boston, apparently a really nice man, dropped dead at age 55. There had been a presence, a life force, a history, relationships, all the active tentacles. Now there is a shared vacuum.

It’s been said that men of my generation like to think we’re 19 well into our thirties. So, based on this math, as I stare at 55 this year, I’m representing the “New 30’s” here as I watch a bunch of fellow “30 somethings” drop. I’d be celebrating the milestone with Joe Strummer this year had he not checked out at 50.


As much as we celebrate our joy at finding each other and renewing our lives at age 47, Dolli and I also feel the brevity of time left to us. Absolutely, I’m grateful to be spending the rest of my life a living, breathing, happy man, with the true love of my life (there I go again), three stepdaughters I love dearly, a precious faery of a granddaughter, likely more tykes to come, some dear friends… a great life it is.

But to not recognize the fact that, while yes, it was a process and history that HAD to take place to get me to the precise spot I’m writing from today, I also may have precious little time with all the above, would just be the omissions of a blind man.

Someone wrote that sorrow is the cost of joy.

I get it.

Then again, the sun’s just now starting to come out. I’m gonna get another cup of coffee and get to work.


Pretty pleased very few read this. But I just had to write this. It’s hard to be just barely out of one’s teens and find yourself staring into the abyss, y’know?